Details: So if I understand your question correctly (laying it out in detail - let me know if I misunderstood something please):

1 : You have a LIVE ONLINE site.

2 : You have a MAMP OFFLINE.

3 : You want to install BackupBuddy on the LIVE site.

4 : You want to install BackupBuddy on the MAMP OFFLINE for testing.

5 : You want to make a backup with BackupBuddy on the LIVE site.

6 : You want to then IMPORT/RESTORE/MIGRATE that backup to your MAMP OFFLINE.

7 : You want to work on that NEWLY MIGRATED WordPress on your MAMP OFFLINE.

8 : You then want to use BackupBuddy on your MAMP OFFLINE to make a backup.

9 : You then want to restore that backup onto your LIVE site.

If that's the case, then yes, you can use BackupBuddy on your local install and your live site and do transfers between the two.

Please do note, however, that because each server (LIVE site) and local install (XAMPP, MAMP, etc) are different, some extra configuration MAY be required to get BackupBuddy to work perfectly if there are any sourceserver/host/local restrictions or rules of any kind that may limit BackupBuddy's performance or features. If you run into ANY issues, the forums here will help you move forward in identifying the reason and working around it.

Support and Info: We have a LOT of tutorials and guides around and coming up too, regarding BackupBuddy.

A : Our forums, which you'll get access to, have a TON of information and a wealth of information and other case scenarios.

E : We have FREE webinars planned where Ronald Huereca (one of the main developers of BackupBuddy) and myself go through different aspects of BackupBuddy and answer questions LIVE. In fact, we had 2 such LIVE webinars last night and will post the video of the entire first webinar online on our blog soon.

So basically, once you buy BackupBuddy, you're in good hands! If you everget stuck, you will NOT be left alone and we will help you (whether it's someone else on the forums specific to BackupBuddy OR anyone else in the staff who knows the answer or next step also).

Please let me know if that answers your questions. We would LOVE to have you be part of the BackupBuddy elite! :)

Yep, you got it 100% right. Leaving the Live Online Site up, I want to duplicate it Offline (MAMP) in order to make some tweaks, then move it back to the Live Online Site.

Quote

Please do note, however, that because each server (LIVE site) and local install (XAMPP, MAMP, etc) are different, some extra configuration MAY be required to get BackupBuddy to work perfectly if there are any sourceserver/host/local restrictions or rules of any kind that may limit BackupBuddy's performance or features.

Can you give me a very rough idea of these types of restrictions or rules? I'm not trying to pin you down to specifics, per se, I'm just trying to get an idea as to what might affect me.

Last question: If it's $75 for the plugin and 1 year of support, how much for the second (and subsequent) years?

Some restrictions that may come up: could be many different dozens of things likecommand line zip not being enabled, too small of a php time limit, http_loopback_connections disabled, file permissions, etc. Also, BackupBuddy is mainly built for Live sites so if you run into specific LOCAL dev install issues, we'll try to recommend you some fixes OR will ask you to try something else (for example, for me, BackupBuddy works on XAMPP on Windows, WHILE for some other people I know, BackupBuddy does not work easily on XAMPP for them but does work perfectly on other local dev suites, and vice versa). We focus more on the LIVE servers/hosts/etc, though local installs seem to work too overall under different setups in different programs.

Also, regarding the yearly license, every yearly renewal will be the price that is ongoing at the time of renewal, and many times there are upgrade or seasonal discounts for existing customers which you can use (if they're happening) to renew in the future at a discount.

My parents? I LOVE COLUMBO (probably one of the last remaining 100% full non-old ((hopefully!)) studentsof Columbo in the ever shrinking Columbo-loving universe)! lol.

Regarding Cloudflare, I personally have never tried them, though I've heard of them a lot.

I searched and found 2 threads on the forums related to Cloudflare. One was an actual backup (non-cloudflare-specific) issue which was solved (our customer said they were using Cloudflare and that in the end everything was working), and the other stated the following (copy pasting it as you may understand it more than I do, since I don't use Cloudflare):

Quote

Quoting part of the the actual question (January of this year): "Cloudflare advises to change the path that backupbuddy uses to this direct.mysite.com which then bypasses Cloudflares security."

So basically the question was about modifying BackupBuddy to have those changes.

Quote

Our part of the answer: "there is no way we can accomplish this unless the dev makes some drastic changes to the code."

So basically the answer was that we could not do that. If that is a very specific thing you want to do related to the above copy-pasted question, please let me know and I'll ask more if things have changed or may change.

Considering how commonly MAMP Pro is used for offline development do you think you could actually invest a few minutes and make a video of how to actually install it on MAMP Pro and a real life example of getting it working? And do this for the top five or 6 offline dev tools.

Lots of non-tech people buy YOUR product and others like it for this reason and NEED walk throughs - we're not experts and are using off the shelf products to solve problems. You're the ones who make the claims of how "easy it is".

Stop relying on "user generated" support for products and actually do the work yourself. That's a mark of a good company.

I certainly risk losing support by sharing this criticism but I'm tired of vague answers to specific questions for common questions.

I want to realize the exact same manipulation that "Guest_Henry" mentioned.
(little difference is that I would use WAMP instead of MAMP).

I successfully installed wordpress and it does work well locally.
I copied importbuddy.php & also the associated full restore of my site on the root directory on my local PC.
When I launched importbuddy.php I did get the following error messages:

You can ignore this notice, it is simply indicative that importbuddy does not currently have a "serial number" generated for the log file that it creates and this condition then causes importbuddy to create the required serial number for use in the file name.

The reason you see this is because of the PHP error reporting level that you have set in your server environment. For development environments including notices in reporting is quite common but in a production environment you would probably disable the reporting of notices (and various other "developer orientated" indications such as deprecated and strict). Additionally, if you are seeing the reporting in your browser window you might want to consider configuring PHP to report to a log file instead as this makes it easier to later refer back to anything that might have been logged and stops potential issues with low level reports such as notices interfering with the display of a page (the common "Headers already sent" issue). Of course this is up to you in your personal development environment and you should find details about how to configure these options in the documentation or support for your environment.

On a production server you are strongly recommended to log to a file otherwise you risk exposing details of your site to malicious users who may "force" a PHP failure and elicit the display of a PHP message. Your host support would be best advising you on this as the exact mechanism by which you may achieve this is dependent on the specific environment.

If you have any further question or problem concerning either importbuddy or BackupBuddy please start up a new topic over on the dedicated Members Only BackupBuddy forum, thanks.

Regards...jeremy

"Everything will be all right in the end. If it isn't all right yet then it isn't the end."